I have been gigging with this keyboard since it first came ot. I am never bored or disappointed. It is a real workhorse and only 14 pounds. I do one man band, duos, and larger work. It sounds great!

Rating: 5 out of 5
posted Sunday-May-13-2012 at 01:21

Roman Kogan
a hobbyist user
from USA
writes:

Somehow it has all I wanted from a keyboard at the moment I boight it; the main feature is (!) programmable auto-accompaniment. This feature seems to be absent in a vast majority of more modern models. Great flexibility, lots of cool features. What love most is the easiness of usage: it does not have a big LCD display, but it DOES have a lot of buttons + "shortcut" buttons for quick recall of voice memory, sequences, chords and whole memory presets. Everything can be done with one or two key presses. What I hate in modern models is that you have to press to many buttons, rotate wheels, read what LCD says to do someting simple - change voice, transpose, fine tune, pan, change midi channel or accompaniment style. Plus it is light, portable and can play all day long from 6 D-cell batteries. Good sample quality. Costs around $100

Now bad side. 1)touch sensitive, but not very 2)pitchbend on my keyboard could work better 3)not GM (non General Midi). if you want to play General Midi files on PSR-85 keyboard, write to me, I wrote a program to convert patch numbers from GM to PSR-85 and vice versa, but it is still in beta (at this moment).

Rating: 4 out of 5
posted Friday-Apr-22-2005 at 22:49

noeebo
a professional user
from Oklahoma USA
writes:

I bought my PSR-85 new still in the box.I have recorded 14 plus cds with this thing.With either the stock sounds or through the control of MIDI.My plan for the near future is to use this as a full time MIDI controller.If I had the chance to buy a second one cheap I would!I still gig with it today!

Rating: 5 out of 5
posted Monday-Mar-15-2004 at 14:05

Steve Dipaula
a hobbyist user
from USA
writes:

I give the PSR-85 a 4 rating because it is a lot of keys for the money - at least compared with other portables; should be able to find one for about $100 US. It has 4 modes: Normal, Split, Single Finger and Fingered. In Split mode, you can adjust the volume, octave, reverb depth and panning for each side of the programmable split point. And you can layer a second (dual) voice on each side of the split, again with adjustable volume, etc. And this board remembers everything from last session when power is turned on! Has a pitch bend wheel, sustain pedal input (unfortunately, sustain applies to both sides of the split). Has 4 memory "Pages" to store complete keyboard setups including any recorded song and custom pattern data. Nice. The accompaniment patterns and voices are not bad at all (some of the voices are fantastic, but they use a lot of polyphony which is limited at 28), and good enough for a quick jam session and for some songwriting ideas. I wish there was a switch to turn velocity sensitivity off, but this is better than not having touch response at all! No GM either but who cares. The manual can be downloaded from Yamaha, and I would suggest you get it - there are a lot of no-so-obvious functions, and the display is rather minimal (4 digit LED with dots).

Rating: 4 out of 5
posted Thursday-Sep-27-2001 at 14:10

Paul (songwriter)
a hobbyist user
from England
writes:

This was my first proper keyboard. The quality of samples are superb and the flexiblity

for the price is amazing. It has an in built sequencer and drum machine (of sorts. I still

use it now for playing around with ideas because it produces music so instantly. It was

dropped by Yamaha for the P320 which drops all programmability for a play along cartridge

slot, MAD OR WHAT!!!! For what it is, it is brilliant, but it is only a home keyboard

and cannot be used on its own for writing proper music. (It's gotting a kicking bass drum sound!!)